


Stranger things have happened

by orphan_account



Series: Getting to Tomorrow [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Bro talk, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Relationship Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Leonard can say with full confidence that he knows James T. Kirk about as well as one can truly know another person. Which is why he also knows for sure that he’s never seen Jim in love in all the years he’s known him. Though the way things are looking right now, that seems to be changing."</p><p>In which Jim and Bones have a little chat, and Khan gets the McCoy seal of approval.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger things have happened

Leonard McCoy isn’t Jim’s longest friend cum occasional adult-sitter for nothing.

He’s known Jim for years; seen the young man go from the only genius level repeat offender of Riverside, Iowa to the Captain of a Starfleet ship, commanding respect and loyalty in a crew of over a hundred. He’s faced life-threatening missions and calm diplomatic meetings, advised Jim on the times the Captain needed a friend’s listening ear, and the times the friend needed a medical officer’s discreet opinions.

Hell, he’s literally has been there with Jim through life _and_ death, taking a desperate gamble to bring a dead man back to life.

He’s seen many other sides of Jim too. The drunken one-night stands with a truly staggering number of men, women, aliens and everything between and around. The sleazy bar fights he came out of with a shit-eating grin, looking more alive than anyone with a black eye and a split lip had any reason to. The inflated self-confidence for which he has dearly paid the price on more than one occasion. The hair-trigger temper that leads him careening straight to danger.

He’s seen how much Jim _cares_ , the true streaks of brilliance within the man’s mind. He’s seen Jim’s thoughtless callousness and his disregard for what he considers others’ rules.

So really, Leonard can say with full confidence that he _knows_ James T. Kirk about as well as one can truly know another person. Which is why he also knows for sure that he’s never seen Jim in love, in all the years he’s known him.

Though the way things are looking right now, that seems to be changing.

*

He first noticed a difference in his friend over a year ago, but it was more scientific than behavioral then, and easily dismissed amidst everything else going on.

Jim being who he is – which is a reckless bastard with a rebellious streak a mile wide and hell bent of giving him an aneurysm – Leonard always keeps a tricorder handy to shove in Jim’s face at every available opportunity, to make sure everything is going as it should.

(And he does mean _everything_. He is very thorough where Jim Kirk is concerned.)

Which is why the abnormal spikes of hormones – during that brief time between holding Khan prisoner on the _Enterprise_ and Jim dying of radioactive poisoning – was noted and _notable_ , though later forgotten.

Notable because the intense hormonal fluctuations and brain pattern monitoring was summed up by the tricorder as an emotional state combining arousal, lust, anger and shame. Forgotten because, well, a terrorist escaped from their clutches and Jim _died_.

At that time in his idle ruminations, Leonard mused that perhaps it was due to the presence of Carol Marcus on board their ship. Arousal and lust weren’t anything new for Jim Kirk’s system – in fact, Jim aroused and lusting after a beautiful person can even be considered his ground state. The anger could be explained by their mission itself and the superhuman terrorist playing mind-games on them.

The _shame_ though had confused Leonard then. He’d surmised that maybe Jim was feeling guilt over his attraction towards Carol when he was still grieving Pike. (He wasn’t really convinced by his own conclusions there – but hey, McCoy is a medical officer for patching up wounds and broken bones, not a damned psychologist.)

Once Jim came back to life, throughout their fight to uncover the full truth behind Section 31 and the campaign for justice for the sleeping augments and Khan, Leonard recorded a lot of changes in Jim’s emotional state, though outwardly he seemed fine as ever.

Extreme switches between moodiness one week to soaring elation the next, taking a plunge to borderline alcoholism and a string of one-night stands the week after that, those eight months following the crash of the _Vengeance_ were all over the map.

Leonard kept obsessive notes of that time because he was worried it was a result of the augmented blood transfusion that saved Jim’s life. He spent a lot of sleepless nights quelling the guilt in his gut that he’d permanently damaged Jim somehow with his desperate plan.

But the changes showed no discernible pattern no matter how hard he studied them. They just did not add up to one conclusion, despite how many expert journals he read or how many diagnostic algorithms he ran.

And miraculously, the strange behavior just went away by itself somehow around five months ago, after their first proper space excursion in a renovated _Enterprise_.

So after much thought (and an incident involving Orions trying to kidnap them for slave trade) Leonard simply closed his notes on the strange data. Maybe it was just Jim going stir crazy from missing space too much, after wrangling with the justice system and made to work closely with an ex-tyrant who tried to kill them all once.

After all, Jim did have a truly unhealthy love for being suspended in vacuum while trapped in a giant metal bowl that kept them alive. Maybe he had just been stir-crazy. Maybe that’s all that was ailing him.

His readings became perfectly stabilized over their first shore leave following that mission. In fact, they’d never been better. Apart from the normal standard of arousal and adrenaline, Jim also exhibited a chemical cascade that the tricorder saw fit to sum up as ‘happiness’.

So in the end, he was more than glad to just put it all behind him. With the increasing number of missions, he had enough on his plate without fretting over some temporary inexplicable data. His patient was a glowing picture of health. It was all fine.

That is, until about three weeks ago when he took a reading while Jim was talking to Khan, and found the tricorder later flash the result as ‘ _love_ ’.

*

“Hey Bones,” Jim greets with a grin, settling into the seat across from him. They just finished the final debriefing to Starfleet on how exactly shit hit the fan in their last mission and he asked Jim to meet him in the recreation area after the final Captain’s review.

Leonard needs a drink, badly. Especially considering the topic he’s planning to breach with his best friend/Captain/permanent thorn in the backside. Though coffee will have to do for now.

“What did they want to meet alone about?” he hedges, because part of him wants to know and most of him just doesn’t want to go to the real topic he’s working himself up to.

“Just to ream my ass a bit on my ‘repeated instance of bending the regulations’,” Jim does a passable impression of Admiral Dorne’s pompous voice and rolls his eyes, which doesn’t indicate much success for said reaming. “And to ask how the rehabilitation of the augments is working out. Now that they’re all used to the current time and everything, the Brass is falling over itself to ‘integrate their talents into society’.”

He signals the waitress for a sandwich and doesn’t even check her out, though she is stunningly hot. Leonard wonders if the world is ending.

“They’re obviously looking to wrangle them all into the Federation somehow, like they did with Khan,” Jim continues, taking a bite of his sandwich, oblivious to his friend’s internal crisis. “But I put my foot down. Khan’s enforced service is atonement for what he did. The rest of his family didn’t do anything. They should be allowed to choose however they want to live.”

Leonard grudgingly agrees.

When the last horrifying detail of what exactly Marcus got up to in Section 31 and how deep the roots of corruption had spread within Starfleet came out, there was uproar.

In the hundreds of internal shake-ups, inquisition of top admirals and mass sacking of a good chunk of Starfleet that followed, the augments, and Khan in particular, were pushed to centre stage.

In light of all they’d learned about Section 31, no one in Starfleet could truly lay all the blame on Khan anymore, though not for lack of trying. Of course, he needed to be punished for his attack on the Daystrom and the hundreds of deaths caused by the intentional crashing of _Vengeance._ But ultimately, the Federation was forced to concede that Khan was more an instrument wielded horribly, than the wielder himself.

As such, Khan was sentenced to a lifetime of enforced Starfleet service, with the addendum that misbehavior on any scale would be punishable by permanent cryo-freezing. The rest of the augments were allowed to be brought back to life and granted all freedom, provided they followed Federation rules as long as they were on Earth.

It was the best deal he was going to get and Khan took it. And once he was assured the safety of his family, it was like Khan’s brain just switched from a ‘violently murderous warlord’ setting to simply ‘emotionally-constipated grumpy superhuman’.

The fact that the _USS Enterprise_ and her crew were instrumental in getting Khan even this much didn’t go unnoticed by the augment and Leonard has since seen the man actually trying to be pleasant and friendly with them all.

It’s enough to fuck up anyone’s head. Though not as much as thinking about Khan getting ‘ _friendly_ ’ with Kirk in particular.

Which gives him the perfect segue to asking Jim what he needs to (and totally does not _want_ to) ask. He struggles with how to phrase it while Jim eats his sandwich and then decides, yeah fuck it, there’s no way to be delicate about this. Better to just jump in headfirst.

“Are you and Khan fucking?”

In hindsight, maybe he should’ve waited till Jim was done eating.

Jim chokes on a big mouthful of sandwich, coughing and spluttering. Pieces of lettuce and tomatoes go spraying on the countertop and the waitress glares at them from her corner.

Leonard has just started a half-hearted attempt at searching for an anti-choking hypo when Jim manages to get it under control. He wipes his face on a napkin and downs some water, before turning a beet-red face to McCoy.

“ _What_?”

“You and Khan. Are you doing the do? Dancing the horizontal tango, playing hide the salami -?”

“Jesus Bones, _stop_.” Jim’s entirely too red in the face and embarrassed-looking for someone Bones has walked in on in the middle of threesomes before.

Leonard waits, eyebrows raised.

“Should’ve listened to his warning this morning,” Jim mutters to himself, but all Bones hears is the resounding ‘yes’ behind that sentence.

“You mean you two really are?” Leonard doesn’t understand why he feels so stunned; he’s been suspecting this for weeks and has the tricorder data to prove it. But then again, it’s not every day your best friend admits to having sex with a 300 year old superman. One he actively tried to kill a little over a year ago.

Jim ducks his head and nods once at the table, a strange sweet smile flitting across his face like he can’t help it. Leonard saw it often on Jim’s face in the last few weeks, once he knew what to look for. It’s damned adorable is what it is, though he will commit Harakiri before admitting it.

“How the hell did that even _happen_?”

“It’s just, you know,” Jim shrugs awkwardly. “It was just working so closely with him to root out Section 31 and learning about the things Marcus put him through. And then the official questioning – you’ve seen the excerpts of it.”

Leonard has indeed.

Once Starfleet was faced with the inevitability that _they_ were primarily at fault for Khan’s actions, they’d ordered an exhaustive questioning of Khan in the presence of two betazoid telepaths and one empath, with Jim and Spock representing as Starfleet and Federation witnesses.

The Brass got a lot more than they bargained for with that order. In hoping to pin _something_ on Khan, they ended up uncovering many horrifying truths about the human victory in the Eugenics wars instead, and found out exactly why next to no records of that period in history exist.

The victors never do let the atrocities they commit get out. Especially when the other side is banished as war criminals and cannot speak up in retaliation.

It had been a horrifying hour.

“Watching him tell it all there,” Jim continues. “The excerpt cleared for public viewing barely covers the bases. You have no idea, Bones. If I had been him, I’d have done a lot worse than try to eliminate the whole of Starfleet.”

Jim looks away from Leonard like he can’t meet his gaze.

“I could _see_ how I could’ve become him if I’d gone through even _half_ of that,” Jim admits, guilty, haunted. “Hell, I went haring off to Klingon space, not giving a shit about the repercussions, all because I wanted revenge. The things he’s faced from humans every day of his life, again and again, right from childhood... and then he woke up here and Marcus continued to do worse. And I always had you guys to pull me back from the edge, he had nobody.”

Jim turns back, fiddles with his napkin and empty plate. He still can’t seem to meet Leonard’s eyes.

“I understood where he was coming him,” Jim finishes, eyes finally meeting his head on. They are no doubts there at all; they are an unclouded, crystal clear blue. “He will do anything for his family. I am the same. And once I saw how deep that went, once I understood, I just couldn’t hate him anymore.”

A hint of a smile flickers across his mouth.

“And then I got to know him while working to wake the augments,” Jim shrugs again, though this time it’s more natural, more him. The haunted gravity of the quiet confessions from before has fallen away and he is back to cocky Jim Kirk, one of the youngest Captains in Starfleet. “And I _liked_ him.” He frowns for a second, then adds as an afterthought, “Also, I noticed he’s really hot.”

The last vestiges of tension breaks.

Leonard snorts. As if Jim of all people wouldn’t have noticed how blindingly attractive Khan is from the second he clapped eyes on him. The medical officer is as straight as they come and trained to be impartial to boot, and even _he’s_ caught himself eyeing the length of that stupidly hot body whenever Khan enters a room. And he still can’t suppress a shiver up his spine sometimes when Khan speaks, because that _voice_ …

“Stop thinking lustful thoughts about my boyfriend,” Jim punches him on the arm and _ow_. That’s the gratitude you get for bringing a man back to life.

“Is that what he is now?” Leonard shoots back, rubbing at the throbbing limb. “Your _boyfriend_?” He’s had more mature conversations with his pre-teen daughter, honestly.

Jim grimaces. “I called him that once. Big mistake.”

“Why? He run for the hills all commitment-phobic?” he really has to laugh at that, because imagine _Jim_ being the committed one in a relationship.

“No. I think the word ‘boyfriend’ just offends his majesty’s lordly sensibilities,” Jim rolls his eyes. “I think he wants a more dignified label like ‘partner’ or something.”

Leonard snorts again, draining the last of his now-cold coffee and binning the empty cup.

“Bones,” Jim says after a few minutes of silence. “You haven’t talked to anyone else on the crew, have you?”

“ _Would_ I do that before I talked to you? Come on, Jim.”

“Yeah no, of course, thanks,” Jim sighs in relief. “It’s just – I’d like to keep it quiet for a little while longer. Till we’re more solid, y’know?”

“You’ve been with the man for five months,” the doctor points out. “That’s already longer than all of your longest romantic relationships put together.”

“Alright, fine, I just don’t want the crew all up in my business about this right now, okay?” Jim grumbles. “I don’t want to deal with Spock giving me the statistic on how insane I must be to be doing this or – or Uhura’s judgemental glares or Chekov looking at me all worried like Khan’s gonna murder me in my sleep or –”

“Yeah yeah I get it,” Leonard raises his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t planning on it anyway. Telling the crew’s your headache, mate.”

“How did you know anyway?” Jim demands. “Not even most of Khan’s crew know! And they've all got creepy group ESP.”

Now it’s Leonard’s turn to be sheepish. He figures in this case showing is better than telling and pulls out his PADD to switch to his record of Jim’s health stats.

It takes Jim a few minutes to fully understand what exactly he’s seeing and when he does, his head lifts with an outraged noise.

“McCoy! You are not allowed to monitor people’s psychological reactions like this outside of specifically-sanctioned annual medical tests!”

“Yeah, because my ship’s Captain has certainly never bent a rule here and there for his convenience,” Leonard replies drily. “Besides, I needed to make sure you weren’t going crazy.”

“You have readings here collected from way before I got the blood transfusion,” Jim points out, glaring.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Leonard quips back.

Jim frowns, obviously grasping for some way to make his petulance known, but eventually gives up. He scrolls through the records, face growing steadily redder the more he reads.

“God, this is embarrassing,” he finally groans, shoving the PADD back at Leonard. “Delete all that. Immediately. If Khan gets his hands on it, we’ll finally find a way to reliably incapacitate an augment because he’ll pass out laughing.”

Leonard chuckles, pocketing the gadget, ‘cause like hell he’s gonna delete that. He now has enough blackmail material to get Jim to show up for his physicals for the next _decade_.

Jim’s communicator trills, interrupting them. Judging by the truly soppy grin on Jim’s face while reading the message, Leonard guesses its Khan.

“I’m being summoned,” Jim confirms, standing up and fixing his rumpled uniform. “Khan has some questions about New Vulcan’s atmospheric components.”

“Yeah that’s totally what you guys are gonna be doing, discussing New Vulcan’s _weather_.”

“Hey we don’t have sex _all_ the time,” Jim protests as they walk out into the late morning sunshine. “Just most of the time,” he amends, at the look Leonard gives him.

“What’s that even like?” Leonard can’t help asking. Call it medical curiosity. (No, it’s really not). “Sex with a superhuman.”

Jim’s eyes glaze over so quickly it’s almost alarming.

“Oh god you have no idea,” he says, looking blissed out just at the memory of whatever it is. Leonard can practically see huge chunks of his brain shutting down. “He wasn’t kidding when he said he’s better, at everything. The _stamina_ , Bones. He really can go at it for hours. And god, you should see the man give head, like you wouldn’t _believe_ –“

“Nope enough, sorry I asked,” Leonard interrupts. He can’t listen to this and hope to retain his sanity intact.

Some things are better left implied.

They reach the courtyard stairs that lead out to the main streets in amiable silence and Leonard reaches out a hand to stop Jim. There’s one last thing he needs to say.

“I don’t need this,” he holds up his PADD, “to know how happy you are. I can _see_ it, as obvious as the sun. _He’s_ the reason for that. And you’ve been good for him too, he’s actually downright _magnanimous_ these days, it’s fucking creepy. So I guess what I want to say is, good luck. Despite my better judgment and sanity, I’m rooting for you two.”

Jim looks touched and like he doesn’t know how to react. Leonard is feeling plenty awkward himself.

After some manly hugging, back-slapping and nodding, Jim’s on his way to meet his ex-terrorist, superhuman enemy turned boyfriend, looking high on love. It’s a testament to how truly ridiculous their lives are that that actually sounds like a perfectly normal thing to be doing.

(Leonard managed to smuggle in a stash of some fine Orion whiskey during their last mission. He’s looking forward to indulging in it tonight.)

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure a tricorder can't do any of that, but shh. Sci-fi science! I just had a vision of Bones blinking bewildered and shaking his head at a graphical chart explaining to him how moony Jim is over Khan, and I needed it like air. And now we tick off the 'telling one of the best friends' trope. Hope you all enjoyed it! <3


End file.
